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Name: Dag Grada
What office are you seeking? DeKalb Park District Commissioner
What is your political party? Commissioners are non-partisan
What is your current age? 60
Occupation and employer: Sheet Metal Worker (construction), semi-retired
What offices, if any, have you previously held? Ten years as a DeKalb Park District Commissioner. Currently serving as Board President.
City: Forty year resident of DeKalb
Campaign Website: no
Education: Kaneland High School Class of ‘82
Sheet Metal specific training in areas of:
- System balancing
- Energy management
- Fabrication efficiency
- System design
Community Involvement: Active with DeKalb Park District’s conservation efforts since 2013, focusing on invasive species management within our parks. These efforts have benefited the community not only from an environmental perspective, but also from that of public safety and utility.
Conservation work with various groups outside of DeKalb, as time allows. Currently most active with Friends of Sandy Ford in LaSalle County.
Volunteer assistant with ESL instruction at Conexión Comunidad in DeKalb for several years.
Taught whitewater kayaking on a volunteer basis for NIU OCR for ten years.
Marital status/Immediate family: Married to Elizabeth Grada near 18 years. Daughter Eleanor is a freshman at Loyola University, daughter Amélie is a junior at DeKalb High School, and son Roy is in fourth grade. Yes, I’m a bit if a late bloomer with family.
Questions:
Why are you running?
Experience, continuity, and to see longer term projects through to their completion.
One if the greatest challenges the DeKalb Park District faces is that of institutional knowledge and experience with senior staff and board. The two board positions which are not up for election this year are held by very capable individuals, but their two years of service limits greater awareness of the state of the park district. Our Executive Director is less than a year with us in DeKalb and our senior staff has seen significant turnover during my ten years in office. I believe there is benefit in knowing where we’re going, where we’ve been, and what worked or didn’t the last time we tried.
When I started as a commissioner, there were serious issues facing the park district. The district had expanded at a rate greater than it could effectively maintain, resulting in an excessive amount of deferred maintenance. This resulted in deteriorated infrastructure, not only high profile installations like our golf courses and our swimming pool, but also in less interesting but equally important areas such as paving, lighting, building and vehicle fleet maintenance. I am proud of what we have achieved in the past ten years and would like the opportunity to see some of our remaining challenges through to completion.
What are the DeKalb Park District’s top 3 most pressing needs? How would you address them if elected?
Master and Strategic Planning
Golf courses are in much better shape than they were a handful of years back with a derelict irrigation system replaced, and numerous other capital improvements realized. Swimming pool replacement is finally underway, no more worrying if its next breath would be its last. No longer (almost) have fleet vehicles which would qualify for antique license plates. Replacing out trails which were built asphalt on dirt, less expensive initially but more so on the long run when they fail. Most of the major issues of the past ten years have been addressed and the district is in a better place than it was ten years past. We now need to define through effective planning where we could or should go in the next ten years. An uncoordinated, higgelty piggelty approach to development and improvement is not cost effective, so we need to define our course going forward.
Diversity of recreational opportunities
Once upon a time, you took a parcel of land and slapped a generic, plastic playground on it, installed some pathes and benches and trees, and called it a park. Golf course for the big kids and swimming pool for the families, what else do you need? We can do better.
If you look back through park district media, you’ll find a goofy photo of me playing in the sprayground at Welsh Park when we opened it, and another of me testing the zipline at the Shipman Park rebuild. What do we have that you’ll not find, rinse and repeat, in any other town? What sets us apart? What can spark the imagination of a young child, or physically challenge a tween? There’s nature play and creative play and any number of ways to describe the play the came normally with many of my generation, but seems to become increasingly more challenging for each subsequent generation to realize. We can do better.
Staff stability and continuity
Earlier this year, I had an enjoyable conversation with senior staff of a larger, suburban park district whose work I’ve admired. I was surprised to find that the majority of their senior staff had been with the district for twenty or more years. DeKalb has had five executive directors in the past dozen years and our senior departmental superintendent has been with us a bit over ten years. There aren’t easy answers with this one, but we have an engaged executive director and are building from there.
How often do you make use of DeKalb Park District facilities/grounds/amenities/programming?
Personally, I’m low maintenance parks-wise, enjoying woods time in some of our less developed areas such as Prairie and Veterans Parks on a fairly regular basis. I used to play disc golf fairly regularly at Prairie Park, but time availability and interests have changed so I don’t get out as often as I once did. My younger daughter still helps me on some of the volunteer days and my son is and has been in a variety of district programs.
Do you believe the DeKalb Park District’s budget is prioritizing the right things? If elected, what would you want to see the dollars go to?
Yes. I’ve been a part of the budget process for the past ten years. I haven’t agreed with every penny along the way, but the important thing to remember is that budget is not about me, it’s about board consensus. I support the consensus we’ve arrived at.
I hear people who object to the amount of money we’ll spend on the pool and I hear people who object to the amount of money we spend on golf, and I myself cringe at the amount of money it takes to maintain paving every year. Why do we need this? Why do we need that? The important thing is to attempt to align the budget with the needs of the community as a whole, not just the golfers or swimmers or pickleballers or whatever. What I support now is the budget we’ve arrived upon (hint : gorilla in the room this year is the pool) and what I support ongoing, should I be reelected, will reflect the status of the district a year from now.
Hopkins Pool in DeKalb was demolished last November to make way for a new aquatic facility which is projected to open by 2026. The entire project is estimated to cost between $12 to $15 million, according to the park district. That also means DeKalb residents won’t have a public pool for the second summer in a row. Do you agree with this decision? Why or why not?
My personal opinion has been that the park district should have proceeded with the design we had a handful of years back. It would have been challenging running the project through Covid, but we would have had more pool for less money. It didn’t happen because the board changed, and the new consensus was that there had not been sufficient public input into the planning process. A pool planning committee was formed, time passed, post Covid price increases put the previous design out of what we considered to be our budget, and essentially we were back at square one.
Since summer is prime time for pool usage, it is also off prime for pool construction, so the decision was made to sacrifice a summer to effect construction cost savings. A top end figure was determined for pool construction but increasing liabilities discovered in the planning stages on top of rapidly rising material costs kept putting the project over potential budget. This prompted a series of redesigns and reductions attempting to bring project costs back in line with potential budget.
Our newly hired Executive Director brought a fresh perspective to the project this past summer. He questioned whether the reductions in size and amenities had left us with a pool which was capable of meeting the needs of the community. Question of funding was reviewed and revised to enable redesign to a facilty which should serve us for the next thirty years.
Do I like that we’ll be closed for two summers? Not one damn bit, but I understand how we got here.
Do I like the price tag? Heck of a lot of money, but it’s either this, ten million spent on an undersized check the box installation, or no pool at all. Of all the (altogether too many) surveys and studies and questionnaires which have been done with the community over the years, every single one has had the vast majority of respondents saying that yes, the community wants a pool.
Apologies for the long answer. Not a simple issue and a bunch of headaches along the way.
How will you make sure you are accessible to your constituents?
I can be reached by email at dgrada@dekalbparkdistrict.com. Owing to the nature of the position, I don’t have office hours or a district telephone number. I’m usually at board meetings at least thirty minutes in advance, so feel free to stop by and visit with us there as well.
Whenever possible, I prefer to talk face to face, twist my arm and we can try to find a time for a walk in the park.